At the Pune city stand, ‘more-the-merrier’ doesn’t pay

Meritorious class X and XII students in Pune city stand to get smaller amounts in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) scholarships this year, considering that a whopping 8,000 applications have been received by the civic body
to date.

The budgetary provision for the scholarships is, however, fixed at Rs6 crore. Considering the number of applications, there would be a requirement of Rs10 crore for the purpose.

The increase in applications is being attributed to the efforts of corporators in view of ensuing elections to the PMC in February 2012.

The PMC gives scholarship to students who secure more than 80% marks in standard X or XII examinations. The scholarship for standard X is Rs15,000 and for standard XII is Rs25,000. The benchmark for scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) students has been lowered from 80% to 70%.

The PMC started the scholarship scheme in 2008 -09 to those students in Pune who secured more than 80% marks in standard X or standard XII examinations. Owing to the increasing number of applications, in the last financial year students of standard X got Rs10,620 each, while those of standard XII got Rs17,300 each.  

In 2010-11, the PMC gave scholarship to 5,278 students of standard X and 973 students of standard XII. In 2008-09, when the scheme was launched, 3,051 students of standard X and 485 students of standard XII were the beneficiaries.  

Deputy municipal commissioner Dnyaneshwar Molak told DNA that scrutiny of applications is presently on.

The administration has planned to distribute scholarship cheques by Diwali.

There is a need to provide an additional Rs4 crore for full scholarships.

The civic administration hopes the extra monies would be made available by corporators by transferring them from unspent funds of other projects.